Worried about his guest’s appetite for destruction, Jorice, refined lord of the city, ended up walking around for several days, following Gallilah with difficulty, as this woman had horrendously long legs. The strides she made when just walking were already awful enough to follow after, but she didn’t just walk. She was speed-walking. She was soaring through the streets like she was on a time limit.
To put it in simple terms, the city lord’s lungs were begging for mercy. At this point, he regretted embarking on the path of a mage instead of a knight…
Thankfully, she did stop every once in a while.
“Say, Old Man, did you see anything weird lately? Like, something made of steel that murders people?”
“No, no… But, Young Lady, what happened to your eyes?”
Gallilah glanced to the sides.
“What do you mean?”
“Your bright purple eyes! I don’t see much, but they stood out so prominently before, even I could see them”
“Purple eyes, huh? Say, Old Man, how many fingers am I holding up, right now?”
“At least two”
She was holding all five up. This elder was as blind as a mole.
“Excuse me, but I am not the same young woman with purple eyes… Did she… Look like me perhaps?”
“Oh, sorry for the misunderstanding then! You just so happen to be around as tall as her, and you both have a very strong build! It’s good to be strong, the world is a dangerous place…”
Jorice looked back and forth between the old man and Gallilah. If he wasn’t mistaken, this was all sounding like a solid lead.
‘I see. And did you often see her? Does she live in the area?”
The elder nodded slowly.
“She comes to drink tea nearly every day! Oh… But I haven’t seen her in… Huh… Two weeks? She likes to go into my old garden. I don’t know what she likes about that messy thing, but to each their own”
Gallilah glanced at the blond city lord and then back at the old man.
“Sir, would you mind if I check out your garden?”
“Go ahead, do you want to stay for biscuits and tea? I have a delightful story about…”
After having to discuss with the elder, the duo was finally able to gain access to the garden, and it didn’t take too long for them to find something suspicious, namely, Jorice’s foot went right through the soil after he went and checked behind some overgrown thorns, revealing a large hole that had been carefully covered up to be unseen by the naked eye.
“By the gods. Leton was right, it does hide underground!”
“Of course, my little munchkin is right, he’s the smartest man in this entire country–Alright, let’s go”
“Right now? Is it not reckless to go into a hole dug by a dangerous monster? I do not doubt your capabilities, Miss, but in such a confined space, would it not have a massive advantage?”
That was without mentioning the fact that the monster was quite strong. It had mauled and torn apart guards in armour in its mad escape from Tolten, so it was at least strong enough to manhandle several full-grown men without problem… So even if Gallilah was many times stronger than that on account of being a draconic monsterfolk, going into a tight space that it had seemingly dug and designed for itself was exactly akin to jumping into a bear’s cave.
“And do you have any better ideas, Blondie Boy?”
“Blondie Boy-?! This… I… The better idea would be to try to suffocate the monster, no? I have an affinity for fire and smoke magic, I can do that without problem”
“It won’t work, it can’t be suffocated”
“How do you know that? Did Leton tell you?”
“Of course”
“How does HE know this?”
“I don’t know”
“You are just lying to me at this point…”
Gallilah just shrugged in Jorice’s face.
“Listen, Jojo, I just know that it isn’t possible, we have to do some tunnel-diving, find the monster, and beat it up, as simple as that… I am going in first”
And with these words, Gallilah fearlessly slithered down into the tunnel, and rather than moving in the dark, she opened her mouth–Which was more like a maw–And spat out a sphere of fire that silently hovered in front of her. The ball was so tranquil and calm, it would be hard to tell that it was made from flames.
After a while of going down a very sharp descent, the monsterfolk found herself in a larger room where she could stand upright, and there, she saw many more tunnels, but all of them were blocked off by what looked like heavy rocks.
Closer inspection would reveal that the way they were placed was very intentional, as there was a small space that could accommodate them right beside the rocks, which made it seem like this was a primitive interpretation of a door.
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But Gallilah didn’t care much for this, as something instantly captured her attention upon setting foot down here…
“Oh crap… I can’t believe I am crawling through dirt like this… My father would be furious”
Jorice showed up not too long after, and he, too, seemed to be struck by a feeling of wrongness.
“This place… It is filled with… Something, I don’t recognise this energy”
“It’s probably negative energy, a mage who encountered the monster said that it had left areas nearly devoid of it in its wake”
“Wait, there’s someone who met the monster and lived? How come I didn’t hear of this?”
“Don’t worry about it”
“I worry very much about it!”
The monsterfolk focused, but unfortunately, negative energy had spread so deeply all over the place that it was all but impossible to pinpoint a source.
“Maybe… Maybe the curse that befell us cursed the underground rather than the city itself? I was wondering, it seemed to just pop out of existence all of a sudden…”
Jorice spoke aloud, but even he didn’t really believe it. The energy Argantis used to make his large curse had very clearly not been the same one he was currently sensing. He just kept talking because the enclosed space was making him nervous.
Gallilah glanced at him with a look that said, ‘If you’re scared, just go back up’, and that glance hurt Jorice’s ego deeply, so, albeit unwillingly, he continued forward by following behind the monsterfolk.
It was absurd just how many tunnels intertwined, went up and down, or were dug in ways that made it very clearly difficult to move around. The more they progressed, the more obvious the purpose of the underground became.
This place was one giant trap. A game, Gallilah and Jorice could move about without much problem, as one was strong, and the other had access to mana manipulation, but for a regular guard like the ones that had disappeared? This place would be a dark maze, a hunting ground for the monster.
The tunnels with stones blocking them were actually wider than the rest, made to be easier and faster to traverse. They were the short-cuts of the creature, which it could use to easily catch up, cut off, or sneak up on its victims.
Not to mention, the ambience was simply awful, with the place flooded with negative energy. Jorice had to constantly circulate his mana as the sheer amount of negative energy was trying to enter his body in excess. If he didn’t do this, he would suffer from energy poisoning, alongside whatever unique effects negative energy in particular possessed.
It was honestly surprising that he had been unable to sense that massive amount of energy until he had literally stepped into it…
Jorice also cast his own lights, illuminated all the way down to every tunnel they passed by, and thanks to his constant and diligent purging of his body from the foreign energy, he knew well that it wasn’t affecting him in the slightest…
“Wait, I think I see something”
Said the city lord, sending light farther down the tunnel to his right, this one was a bit longer than the others, but he could have sworn that there was something unusual in the darkness just at the end of it…
His mana light illuminated a humanoid figure, which immediately hid away once the light reached it.
He screamed like a little girl and bumped his head on the ceiling.
“What the hell is happening?”
Gallilah was ahead, and she couldn’t exactly turn around to look at the city lord directly.
“There was a girl! A freakish, corpse-looking girl down the end of that tunnel!”
“What?”
“I swear I freaking saw it, she had blonde hair with ringlets and blue eyes! Her skin was all pale, she looked like a freaking corpse!”
“Calm down, will you?”
Jorice found it hard to calm down, but he soon realised that the amount of negative energy that had gotten into him was strangely high despite him never stopping to circulate even as he was freaked out of his wits…
Something definitely wasn’t right down here, he knew that he hadn’t hallucinated. There was definitely something else with them.
And Gallilah also got to take notice of this, as right in front of her, there was a tunnel on the left that she would be able to reach if she extended her arm in full… And from that tunnel, clearly illuminated, a head popped out.
Only for a brief second, but as the monsterfolk froze, it was already gone, and as she hurried forward, the tunnel was empty… Worse than that, it was an obvious dead-end that could barely fit an entire person.
“Blonde and with blue eyes, you said?”
“Yes”
“Well, sorry to inform, but I think there are at least two of them…”
The one she just saw looked nothing like Jorice had described. It had looked like a girl as well, but with long brown hair and purple eyes instead, though, she had definitely looked like a corpse as well…
And for some reason, Gallilah found her heart beating faster than usual… This shouldn’t be enough to scare her normally, especially as she was using her own method to avoid having the ambient energy affect her.
This trend continued as they moved through the tunnels. Girlish giggles and laughs began to echo through the tunnels, more and more figures began popping in and out of sight, and as this kept happening, both Gallilah and Jorice found themselves to be more and more on edge.
But it wasn’t natural, at least, it was for the monsterfolk–Seeing, interacting, and acknowledging these beings was slowly infecting her with an unpleasant sensation of dread.
Once they finally reached another large room where they could stand and stretch, Gallilah and Jorice closed their eyes in an attempt to collect themselves. The city lord, in particular, had his limbs tremble abnormally strongly at this point. Clearly, he was being affected badly.
“Try not to even acknowledge their existence”
Recommended the monsterfolk, and as though on cue, whilst her eyes were closed, she felt a cold hand slowly fall upon her shoulder, a horrible sound reached her ears, sounding like someone choking and drowning at the same time.
“I…Watched…It…All…Happen…Through…Darkening…Eyes…I…Saw…It…All…”
“Look…At…Me…”
“I…Wish…I…Could…Have…Been…Like…You…”
“It…Was…Not…Meant…To…Be…”
“Open…Your…Eyes…”
“I…Am…Here…”
She could hear the sound of someone suffocating, airless gasps and words melded amidst the gruesome sobbing.
“Do…We…Not…Deserve…Pity…?”
“Look…”
“See…”
The voices quieted down, but the cold hand did not leave. It felt more like something else attracted their attention. The ceaseless whispers stopped, and instead, a much clearer voice reached Gallilah’s ears, one that she did not recognise, but filled with genuine terror.
Hurried footsteps disappeared in the distance, and the cold hand, after squeezing her shoulder, went away as well, leaving only a few words of fear behind…
“She’s here!”
“Run!”
Gallilah and Jorice opened their eyes, having no time to recover from what had just happened. The voices had not lied. Something was coming. Something was here.
Dirt was displaced, and foreign light was ignited.
A monster of steel had risen from the wall.
